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| 9/18/26 Cafe Hagen at Centennial Park (quiche not shown to scale) |
I’d been trying to get to Seattle’s newly redeveloped Centennial Park all summer. My goal was to eventually lead a USk outing there, but this
waterfront park on Elliott Bay had several challenges. People who had been there
said it was wide open with very little shade anywhere. With new, attractive
bike and walking paths connecting the entire waterfront from Queen Anne to downtown,
arriving by bike was ideal, but what about the rest of us? Although free
parking was available, word had gotten out, and now the lots were full most of
the time. For me, taking public transportation required a time-consuming route that
included light rail, multiple buses and walking.
Now that the new Café Hagen was open at the north end of the park, I got a new idea: I put the café as my destination in Google Maps, and suddenly the bus leg of my route was shorter, cutting transit time significantly. Summer was nearly over, but I finally figured out how to get there!
Since this visit was mostly a scouting mission, I began with lunch at Café Hagen (a delicious quiche; much better than the nearly inedible toast I had recently at a different Café Hagen) while sketching the enormous grain terminal right in front of me (top of post). Then I walked south, stopping occasionally to sketch along the way (below), until I reached the Olympic Sculpture Park a little more than a mile from Hagen. I saw several more potential sketches as I walked, but I saved them for future visits.
By no coincidence, USk Seattle was near the end of their outing there (which I decided to skip because I’d just sketched at the Sculpture Park in May). I had just enough time for one quick sketch of a sculpture so that I could join the group for the throwdown.
Now that I know how to get to Centennial Park, I can lead an outing there and offer suggestions for public transit. With no shelter or shade except at the café, which has plenty of covered outdoor seating, the cooler, cloudier part of the year may be the best time to be there anyway. I’ll see if I can squeeze in an outing after all before the wet part of fall gets under way.
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| Myrtle Edwards Park, which is now connected to Centennial Park |
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| Indian blanket flowers, which cover a large area of the newly planted pollinator meadow |

























